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Apple to Sell Low-Cost 12-Inch and 13-inch MacBooks for $700 or Less

CarAnalogy said:
Don't do it. The race to the bottom helped put the PC industry in the sad state it is today. I hope they don't start sacrificing standards for the sake of short term sales.
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The PC industry is doing just fine lmao. A low cost affordable Macbook ain't gonna ruin the Mac like you think it will since it's just one product out of many others. Did the Mac Mini ruin the Mac when it was introduced? No. It made so many people switch to Mac since there was now a desktop Mac they could afford. (It got me to switch after all)

A low cost Macbook will only bolster the lineup and add even more value to the more expensive Macs, just like the iPhone SE and Apple Watch SE did.
 
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Most people are just using laptops to access the internet anyway, and if Apple can make a pricey but high-quality machine that can do just that (with an M1?) this would make sense.
It would be neat if they emulated the styling of the iBook G4 or early white MacBooks for this. I know that's unlikely, but it would be a fun way to tap into the current 2000s nostalgia.
 
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I’d like to see Apple offering cheaper, more rugged, plastic versions of many of its products - this including MacBooks and iPhones. I think many of its biggest sales hits have fit this description, and it’s foregoing sales through an excessive focus on premium finishes and materials.
 
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jimbobb24 said:
And ship junk?
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I don't see any junk being shipped, nor am I going to speculate that Apple is preparing to ship junk. I will say that I don't think everything needs to be milled aluminum/titanium and glass.

They have certainly shipped junk and problem stuff in the past (butterfly keyboard?), but everything now is pretty solid.
 
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I do miss the 12 inch super small form factor macbook from back in the intel days. I used one at a company just to take to meetings. It was handy for that. I would return to my desktop iMac (with an intel 7700k!) that was THE super fast single thread performance leader for a short while back in the day.

I have the same concerns as @CrazyMacUser - I wonder if a cut down machine would be aggravatingly slow in a year or two.
 
Ludatyk said:
I don't see a low priced MacBook competing against Chromebooks... especially in the educational realm. And I know, I know... macOS is a much better OS. But the problem is Chromebooks can go as low as $150 and most education districts have tight budgets.
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The cost of laptops is certainly not nothing, but it's a tiny portion of the overall budget. More important than the capital expense is how long they last, and those $150 Chromebooks are proving to be quite fragile and unreliable. Schools can easily get 7+ years out of macbooks, and probably another few years after that as secondary / backup machines. My wife works at a school, and they still have a lot of teachers and staff on 2013-2015 Macbook Airs. And, they still great work great, the latest macOS supports 2012+ machines, no reason they won't last another few years. No Chromebook can match that.
 
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oneMadRssn said:
The cost of laptops is certainly not nothing, but it's a tiny portion of the overall budget. More important than the capital expense is how long they last, and those $150 Chromebooks are proving to be quite fragile and unreliable. Schools can easily get 7+ years out of macbooks, and probably another few years after that as secondary / backup machines. My wife works at a school, and they still have a lot of teachers and staff on 2013-2015 Macbook Airs. And, they still great work great, the latest macOS supports 2012+ machines, no reason they won't last another few years. No Chromebook can match that.
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My late 2008 MBP still works (battery removed, of course)! It won't run a modern browser, so it basically won't load most websites, but the fact that it works at all amazes me. The fans don't sound like they will last much longer, though.
 
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Jack Burton said:
I do miss the 12 inch super small form factor macbook from back in the intel days. I used one at a company just to take to meetings. It was handy for that. I would return to my desktop iMac (with an intel 7700k!) that was THE super fast single thread performance leader for a short while back in the day.

I have the same concerns as @CrazyMacUser - I wonder if a cut down machine would be aggravatingly slow in a year or two.
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I doubt it. I had MacBook Retina 2015 and it did as good as a job in 2020 as it did in 2015 (battery too).

I think you’d only really have problems if it was struggling to begin with. In that case you bought the wrong product or spec.

MacOS is super efficient, it’s the software you select to run on it and whether you bought an appropriately powerful system for it in the first place.
 
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jimbobb24 said:
And ship junk?
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I mean Apple already does. Did you forget the butterfly era Macbooks?

Or the 2013 Mac Pro?

Or bendgate?

Or the fact they ship phones without chargers?

Or the sad state the iPad is in?

Or the HomePod?

Or the Studio Display?

I can go on. But I can also list the junk Jobs era shipped, like the iPod Hifi.
 
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Bring it on, I've been calling for a $699 laptop for years... I expect people will complain about the specs, but I still expect something like:

- 12" Screen
- A* Class SoC
- 8 GB RAM
- 256 GB Storage
- below Retina Screen
- 2x USB4 Ports
- MagSafe Port
- Headphone Port
 
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aonez said:
12 inch again, yes!! To be fair the old 12 inch is similar to the current 13 inch in size.

Anyway I’ll buy anything smaller, always, and if it has a M Pro/Max I’ll pay it 🤩
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Not sure I understand the advantage of having a 12" screen over the 13". Is the device really that much smaller?
 
I hope the call it the eMate. I wanted an eMate 300 back in the day.
25392-34505-emate-xl.jpg
 
dmylrea said:
Just what I DON'T want is another new MacBook with 1 inch bezels around it. Get rid of the bezels altogether and make it a super small 12" Macbook.
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It cannot be smaller, because it was already as big as the full size keyboard. However, they could enlarge the screen to 12.5" or so in the same body.
 
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JohannesO said:
I'm probably the only one who thinks it's crazy to have a 12" device with a keyboard and a decent desktop OS for the same price as a 6" device without a keyboard and desktop OS.

View attachment 2302399
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The size tells only half the story, though. The iPhone packs in a ton of sensors, two cameras with up to four lenses, a 5G modem and a very high quality OLED touch screen -- all in, what, a 1/4 or 1/5 the volume of a laptop? The MacBook has way less "guts" inside, spread out over more space.
 
jimbobb24 said:
And ship junk?
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The Macs I own today are by a VAST margin more capable, reliable and better built than the Macs I was buying in the Jobs era.

The only big notable hardware gaffe (and it was huge) I've experienced in the past 10 years was that ****ing butterfly keyboard.
 
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